I’m really bad at following up on two-part posts, but here is the conclusion to my broken leg story.
After a brief ambulance ride, I was wheeled into the ER room at the local hospital. Fortunately, it was late at night and the area of the hospital that dealt with bone fractures was pretty much empty. So it was just my friends and me and a doctor and two nurses in the section where I was.
I have to say that this was probably the best hospital experience I have ever had. I was almost worth breaking my leg for. Almost. I could swear that the doctor and nurses were some kind of comedy team. They were hilarious and were cracking jokes and it really lightened the mood for everyone. They took several x-rays and concluded that my fibula was broken along with several tendons or ligaments that had been torn.
The doctor decided that I needed to have my bone set back into place, so they shot me up with morphine. I had never had morphine before. The feeling was a little like being drunk but a little less unpleasant. I think that I must have a very high tolerance to pain medication because I felt every bit of their attempts to set my bone back into place. Even the painkillers that they prescribed never really affected me that much.
They then gave me a set of crutches and showed me how to use them. Also, no driving or walking for six weeks, however I’ve started driving with my left leg.
Right now I’m on some hardcore painkillers. Vicodin to be exact. Apparently this is some pretty hard stuff. In fact I believe that Vicodin, along with most other narcotic painkillers, are closely related to heroin, which is why it is so easy to get addicted to them.
I got my first prescription for Vicodin after going to the emergency room right after I broke my leg. I got a second batch after a visit with the orthopedic surgeon. He prescribed me a lower dosage which caused me to go through withdrawal. I typically only take the pills right before I go to bed. My leg doesn’t really hurt all that much, but it can get very uncomfortable at night. Taking painkillers helps me forget about that discomfort. However, when the doctor gave me a new prescription, the new pills were only about 70% as potent as the old pills. Apparently, my body wasn’t going to stand for that, so I started getting withdrawal symptoms a few hours before I usually go to bed. Unfortunately at the time, I didn’t know they were withdrawal symptoms. I thought that I had come down with a really bad fever. I ached all over, I had the chills and couldn’t get the heat high enough, and I was very irritable. I decided to go to bed, and of course, take a painkiller.
About two hours later I woke up, drenched in sweat. My wife had left the heat on that night because I was so cold before I went to bed, but now I was hot! I also felt completely better. All my symptoms were gone. It was at that point when I realized what had happened. I originally didn’t associate the way I was feeling with the painkillers because it had been nearly 24 hours since I had last taken them. I had read that withdraw usually happens after 8 hours, but then again, I’m no expert.
Another weird side effect of painkillers is the dreams. Occasionally I will have terrible dreams that wreck my sleep for that night. Now, I’m not really sure what makes these dreams bad, but I hated the. One dream was about a reality show about people who had broken their legs. Their legs had healed and the show was featuring what they were doing now. I remember one guy had started a pizza parlor, as if that has anything to do with breaking one’s leg. But nobody said dreams made a heck of a lot of sense. Another dream was about my dad. He was teaching my brother and me how to snort cocaine.
So bizarre.
